Circle of Moms Top 25 Southern Moms

Happy Labor Day weekend!!!

 

This time last year we had just returned from a trip to Utah, where I crossed off a lifelong wish to see Arches National Park. Soon after we were back in Gaŗezers for a last hurrah of the summer, and then it was back to house-hunting in South Carolina. It was a time of readjustment and reverse culture shock, and looking back on those hot and humid days spent in temporary housing I swallow hard, reminded of all I have to be grateful for. Although our time in France ended much too quickly, we gained so much from our experiences and adventures there. In addition, it was moving to Clermont-Ferrand that brought about this blog!

 

Hardly even a year into our expatriate journey Femme au Foyer was nominated as a Circle of Mom’s Top 25 Expat Mom Blog. If you look over to the right side of my blog, a little ways down you’ll find a “Circle of Moms Favorite” badge, which is just one more memory of the years in France – and a reminder of all the readers that cared enough to vote, to get this blog to #4 on the list. Best of all, I made several new blogging acquaintances, including Ariana at And Here We Are and Aidan at Conjugating Irregular Verbs - whom I still follow.

 

Once again I’ve been nominated for a Circle of Moms Top 25 blogger, this time in the Southern mom category. If I could ask a favor from y’all, and to click over and vote for me? These first days I’m still listed under the “Pending Approval” tab, but all you have to do is find my blog and click on the red heart next to it. There is no signing in, no registration, only a few clicks. It would mean a lot to me to make the Top 25, and I’ll tell you why. First off, I look forward to checking out the other blogs and meeting some new bloggers from down South, and second, my competitive streak has kicked in. But most of all I look at this as an opportunity for some closure; no longer am I an expat mom blogger, and since I’ve been struggling a little with finding a purpose to keep writing, this recognition would give me a renewed sense of purpose to keep searching for my niche.

 

Thank you for each and every vote, comment and email. I wish all of you, whether French and expat friends from our time overseas, Latvian readers here and abroad, Americans, Brits, Aussies… all of the readers who drop in now and again, a wonderful Labor Day and last days of summer.

 

PS Please remember to enter the giveaway! Bonne chance!

Bilingualism

High schoolers don’t often agree, and thus it was a surprise to me fifteen years ago when I found total agreement among the friends I interviewed for a history fair project. The topic was whether growing up bilingual was an advantage in their lives. 100% of the bilingual interviewees - the project was on Americans of Latvian descent - were also confident that they would raise their children bilingually. One of my fellow American-Latvian high school classmates even joked that he would buy “Latvian Hooked on Phonics” for his children, and we exchanged funny stories about times we had spoken Latvian so that others wouldn’t know what was being discussed. “Latvians in Chicago” was the project, and discussing bilingualism was a secondary topic to the stories of three generations of Latvians in the Windy City but quickly took precedence in discussions with my friends.

Benefits through opportunities in travel surfaced early on in the interviews. Many of my friends had already visited Latvia but had also traveled extensively around the US and Canada to Latvian events: summer camps, scouting expeditions, youth association events and other cultural happenings. Bilingualism in travel turns out to be a multi-faceted benefit, as not only is it easier to navigate a country if able to speak the mother tongue, but a speaker of the native language will find it easier to complete everyday tasks, meet people and obtain employment. The motivation to travel internationally was also estimated to be stronger with the additional language under your belt; I doubt that any of my friends would have visited Europe at that young an age if not for the Latvian heritage and language.

Our family’s expatriate stint in France only reinforced my understanding of being bilingual and the connection with travel. The opportunity to move to France came about partly because of my husband’s previous French studies, and the extensive traveling we did during our time overseas would not have been feasible if not for his approach to - if it is a word - trilingualism. My knowledge of French was minimal, and I discovered the complexity of completing tasks without any language fluency; my husband took on the majority of household tasks involving any significant interaction with the locals until I managed to pick up a little French. Luckily this language capability soon accumulated in the form of grocery-store and post-office vocabulary.



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Also mentioned as a benefit of bilingualism in the long-ago history fair project was a financial benefit to speaking two languages. My friends listed their dual-language capabilities on their resumes, and many have since gone on to use their ability to speak a second language with international employers, where a second language leads to an understanding of other cultures, even if the languages in question are different. Working with international companies oftentimes brings exclusive advantages to those who speak the language of the country that the company headquarters is in, and it was widely noted by interviewees that being bilingual is beneficial to one’s career.



In our own home, a large motivating factor in deciding to raise our two boys bilingually is the mental benefit. Several studies have shown that bilingual children have advantages in switching between two tasks, are more adept at problem-solving, more successful at creative thinking and overall, more mentally agile than children that speak only one language. There is evidence that bilingualism delays the onset of Alzheimer’s disease symptoms, in addition to making it easier to learn additional languages. (During our time in France I would not have been able to learn as much French as I did learn without knowing Latvian; it is structured far more similarly to French than to English.) Although toddlers raised in an environment where multiple languages are spoken may take longer to say their first words, the resulting mental flexibility that develops is an asset in development. My oldest, Lauris, is finally speaking in sentences and can differentiate between I, me and mine (which I see as a big milestone in his development), but I will admit that I was very nervous when all his French playmates were speaking and he had not yet started. It helped to remind myself that even as he seemed behind on vocabulary, he did understand most of what was said to him in French and Latvian, and once he started speaking he quickly made up for lost time. In any case, I feel an immense loss over leaving France before he had the chance to truly learn the language; it makes learning Latvian seem that much more important.

But what is the primary benefit of being bilingual, the main reason we are raising our children to be bilingual? The one answer that rang loudest during that interview over a decade ago is the same I submit today: love! Love for Latvia, the Latvian culture, the Latvian people and the Latvian language. Language connects children to their ancestors, it binds us to a country that might be far away but is very close to our hearts.

Both my husband and I were born in the United States, but we identify ourselves as Latvian in addition to American, and being bilingual has been integral in shaping our identity. It is the often mispronounced name, and the Saturdays spent in school building vocabulary and learning grammar. It is answering questions about where Latvia is located, doing history fair projects on Latvians in Chicago and explaining that the language differs very much from Latin. Our language is the tie that connects me to a country thousands of miles away, a granddaughter born in the US to her grandmother born in Europe. My grandparents arrived in the United States after WWII not as immigrants but as displaced persons, and some of the only possessions that they carried with them were their language and their customs. Today speaking two languages is a privilege, not a necessity, and I reap the benefits every day.

As I realized when hitting stop on the tape recorder during that interview of my friends many years ago, the Latvian language is the one thing Latvians have that no other people in the world have. But it was to be another dozen years before I would fully understand the benefits that learning a second language would give me. When my parents made the decision over thirty years ago to teach me Latvian and English, I was given a gift. That gift of a second language has opened doors, created opportunities, and left me with an insight into and appreciation for different cultures and different worlds than my own. And the realization that has come to me today is that I possess no greater gift which to give to my sons.

 

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This essay is my entry into the Inspire Language Learning: Blogger Challenge.

 

As the winner will be determined by a combination of facebook "likes" and a jury panel, please help me by hitting the "like" button below!

 

Thanks to Russell Ward for bringing my attention to this contest! You can check out his entry over at In Search of a Life Less Ordinary.

 

 

No More Bad Photos

This is day 11, the second week of solitary confinement with a toddler and an infant while my husband is abroad. Everyone is still alive.

Lauris has run over Mikus once with the scooter, once with the tricycle, and once with a chair when I had taken the first two away. He has climbed out of his bed 231 times (calculated by multiplying yesterday’s count by 11). He has spilled his juice, dropped his ice cream, and gone digging in the kittie litter box.

Mikus has started to crawl, more like inchworm his way across the floor. He has slept less than ever, waking up earlier, staying up later. This could be due to the heatwave but probably has more to do with his brother giving him a wake-up-call (a lion’s roar right in the ear) when he does fall asleep. An infant, acting alone, has produced two monster loads of laundry.

Me? I have cried out of frustration, anger, fatigue and for no reason at all. My showers consist of one minute affairs as I try to keep Lauris away from Mikus, and Mikus from screaming away those last shreds of my patience. I am on a great diet; it’s called I don’t have time or the energy to eat. And when I do get out of the house it’s a free ticket for both boys to become unmanageable, for passers-by to give me ‘that’ look (the “my children never act like that,” “how can she leave the house,” “évidemment une femme américaine” look). I would love to eat a meal uninterrupted or go shop some of the soldes; but I will settle for washing my hair.
 

This is me in 2003. It was my last year earning my degree in forestry at University of Illinois. I was a member of the Illini Foresters; we attended conclaves (forestry competitions) in other states, participated in log-rolling contests, built giant bonfires, camped out in the winter during our Christmas tree sale fundraiser and generally were a tough, party-hard/work hard crew just starting our lives as adults. The extremely out-of-focus picture was taken on our very last trip as a group, a ten hour road trip to Michigan’s upper peninsula (UP) - I’m chopping away at a 4x8 post in the speed-chop competition. Today I’m sharing this picture and submitting this post to the “No More Bad Photos” competition at In Search of a Life Less Ordinary.

I wish I could recapture this moment, as it is probably the last picture taken of the old me, the care-free girl with a smile on my face and the axe in my hands. I was tough! I didn’t win the speed chop that day, but I finished and set a personal best. This picture represents the girl who would become a wildland firefighter, dreamt of hiking the Appalachian Trail and was convinced Alaska would be the life for her. Not a trace in the picture of a stay-at-home mother living in an apartment in central France – who would have known?

These days I have a harder time finding that girl in the person I am now. Some things haven’t changed since my forestry/firefighting days (two weeks without a real shower) but mostly my life is the opposite of those days ten years ago.  I’m washing my laundry not to get the sweat and blood out, but to wash the spit-up off. I’m not buckling myself into a harness to hang out of a helicopter; I’m buckling two squirming noodles into car seats. And I’m having a hard time feeling “tough” when a mere two weeks sans husband have me wrecked.

Thankfully, this is it. This is day 11 of my husband’s trip to the US, and this is the day he comes home. It is with the relief of an ordeal survived that I’m looking at that picture and seeing that girl I used to be. I wish I had a good photo of my achievement that day in the UP, because despite the occasional longings of an expat mom I know that the things I see in that picture are what have brought me here today. Strength, determination and a healthy dose of no fear are the traits that have ensured my happiness and success, and will continue to enrich my life as a mother, a wife and a woman on a journey.

* Thanks to Russell Ward at In Search of a Life Less Ordinary: Adventures in Making a Home Away from Home, for hosting the No More Bad Photos competition.

** Update 07/02/2012
This essay took first place in the In Search of a Life Less Ordinary competition! Here's the announcement, and a huge thanks to Russell and his wife for awarding me this honor (and the awesome prize of a new Sony camera)!

Top 25 Expat Mom Blogs

Circle of Moms (a major player in the on-line Mom world) informed me yesterday that my blog and interview for the “Top 25 Expat Moms” is featured this month. To read the interview, click here. With your votes, my Femme au Foyer blog reached 4^th place in the world. I want to thank each person who voted, your support is valued and appreciated.

I’ve been asked several times what the prize was, and here is the answer: the pink button you now see on my sidebar, and flowers from my husband for the top-5 finish! J But mainly, I ‘met’ and learned from other impressive bloggers* and learned how such contests are organized.  I also discovered that I have some hard-core readers who are willing to click away daily to show support. (Thanks dad!)

Thanks again, and I hope that I can continue to earn your interest with future posts!

* One of the things I learned was how to notify readers by e-mail when a new blog is posted.  If interested, you can sign up to receive this email on the right hand sidebar.

Oh, and almost forgot to mention, my blog was also listed as a resource by EasyExpat.com in their article "Expat Kids- A Baby Abroad." It's kind of cool to find my blog "out there"....